


No Blinding Light

by justholdstill



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 02:18:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11841909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justholdstill/pseuds/justholdstill
Summary: She is a foreign thing to him, her bright hair on the pillow, her softness the antithesis to sharper masculine angles. At first he kept his distance, almost afraid; then he saw how perfectly she fit into his hands, his cracking life, and thought perhaps he could set old loves and habits aside for what is almost certainly called solace.





	No Blinding Light

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen, of course, from Death Cab for Cutie. Originally published in 2005. Poem excerpt from Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, because I wrote a lot of poetry into my fic back in the day. *eyeroll* It used to contain the whole poem, but I see now how unnecessary that was. :P

**No Blinding Light**

*

She sits up in the bed where she has been sleeping and stares into the darkness. Something is not right. There is another noise, the scrabble of leaves on pavement, and a sudden breath of wind against the windowpane. She pulls a knitted jumper over her pyjamas, moving with a sureness that belies her stumbling during the day through the shadows of her flat, twelve steps down the narrow corridor, five across the kitchen, two to the back door.  
He is exactly where she knew he would be, crouching on the step with a tatty blue scarf around his neck, a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, at the end of which is a round orange glow. She realizes with a silent chuckle that he is wearing her pink dressing gown.  
He motions for her to sit down on the step beside him. It has rained sometime during the night; the alleyway is slick and reflects the streetlamps.

"Is that my jumper?" he asks, taking her hand. 

"Yes," she says. His fingertips, when she takes them in her mouth, are cold and taste like nicotine. His mouth tastes like bergamot and smoke, his cigarette and Earl Grey.

They feel like the only people awake in the world.

 

*

 

He tells her that he loves her wild pink hair, her breasts that are too small, her hips that are too wide; he will not stand for her fussing at the mirror, tugging at her clothes.  
She is astounded that she is enough for him, all the ways she is graceless and young and too much in love, but she supposes a man like him doesn't ask much, someone who spent twelve, thirteen years loving a man who wasn't there.

He comes back to her when the moon is waning once more, often early in the morning when the sun is just rising over the city. She makes them both toast and eggs and bacon before she has to leave for work, and then he sleeps the day away in her bed until she comes home again and fits her body into the curve of his, not minding that he's sweaty and unshaven.  
Always he fumbles a little, unsure of the rhythm of making love until she reminds him. Faltering. Clumsy, like her.

She doesn't know if she should ask whether he's been with a woman before, but she guides his hands anyway, showing him how to touch her. He's got the actual fucking down alright, and after a week or so he'd begun to memorize her as she was learning him.

She thinks of this in the grocery store, her basket half full of apples and bread and frozen peas. She wonders over the baked goods whether he was on the bottom or on top, whether loving her hair and flaws is the same as loving her. She hopes so. If it matters.

 

*

 

It is early evening. He has taken her to a tiny Italian restaurant down the street, the kind with checkered tablecloths, candles in empty wine bottles. It is so sweet that she doesn't think she can stop smiling at him.

"I guess you can tell I've never really done this before," he says, smiling crookedly in return. "This dating thing." Because the love of his life had been there all along.

"It doesn't matter," she says, and it doesn't.

 

*

 

Back before all this began, he had said he was too old for her, too poor. He's still too poor, but now he thinks perhaps what he meant was that he was too old for himself. She melts into him when she sleeps, filling the concavities of his leanness, his solitude, with her warmth, her shampoo smell.

It is not now easy to forget there is a war, each day with more attacks and the fierce expression in Harry's eyes. He might lose himself in the distraction of flesh, but he always surfaces again in the burning world, and because of this he stands guard over her nights, a greying sentry.

She is a foreign thing to him, her bright hair on the pillow, her softness the antithesis to sharper masculine angles. At first he kept his distance, almost afraid; then he saw how perfectly she fit into his hands, his cracking life, and thought perhaps he could set old loves and habits aside for what is almost certainly called solace.

 

*

 

When he came into the bedroom one day just after Dumbledore's death, she was felt-penning poetry on the walls. Instead of asking her what she was doing he sat on the edge of the bed and watched her, his hands clasped between his knees.

_Ah, love, let us be true_  
To one another! for the world, which seems  
To lie before us like a land of dreams,  
So various, so beautiful, so new,  
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 

_Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;_  
And we are here as on a darkling plain  
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,  
Where ignorant armies clash by night. 

When she was finished she sat back on her heels with her fists crammed against her mouth so as not to cry. Not knowing how else to comfort her he slid to the floor behind her, put his arms around her shoulders.

Against her ear he said, "I can't make you any promises."

Against his lips and his collarbone she said, "that's okay, I'll take what I can get." 

 

*

 

The woman goes to the window and pushes it open to better see the lightning, to hear the thunder. She is naked; he studies the shape of her against the wet glass, her hand curled on her hip. The scent of lilacs shaking in the summer squall, a car hissing by on the way to somewhere he doesn't know. 

The storm is on her like a gown. After a moment he calls her back to the bed to test its coolness on her skin. He wants to tell her his history before they die, knowing they might well die in the morning.

It is not a promise.


End file.
